Vector Software (United States) - Case Study Pi Innovo.

The Customer:

Pi Innovo provides prototype and production custom electronics (ECUs) for development of embedded control systems to a variety of customers across a wide range of industries. Pi Innovo is best known for its OpenECU® platform which is a comprehensive family of off-the-shelf rapid control prototyping Electronic Control Units (ECUs) and software designed to take electronic controls innovations from prototyping to production. 

The Challenge:

Schedule at risk for meeting ISO 26262 ASIL D standard:

Pi Innovo needed to meet the ASIL D level of the ISO 26262 automotive standard for a new custom module for an OEM’s Advanced Driver-Assistance System (ADAS) but did not have the resources to meet its software testing schedule. ISO 26262 ASIL D requires formal software testing to ensure that a device behavior conforms to its requirements including unit, integration, and system testing that is traceable to established requirements, as well as code coverage analysis to demonstrate testing completeness. Adding to this challenge was that, to meet deadlines, testing had to begin while software was still in development. Pi Innovo’s software was comprised of 73 files with over 55,000 lines of C code. To comply with ASIL D, this code had to be tested against over 1,650 requirements which needed to be associated with functions in the code.

The Solution:

Vector Services provides engineering and consulting for industry standards and testing:

To meet Pi Innovo’s requirements, Vector Services, with its partner Brightskies, proposed a test solution that would use VectorCAST in a simulated environment and enable Pi Innovo to:

• Prove application correctness at the unit level
• Perform Fault Injection and Interface Based Testing
• Implement Requirements-Based testing
• Meet all coverage requirements
• Achieve 100% Statement+Branch Coverage on all files
• Reach 100% MC/DC Coverage on all files

During the development effort, Vector Services had to begin testing before Pi Innovo could complete its requirements. To prevent delays in testing, Vector Services provided an engineer for 2 weeks onsite to help them complete their requirements and allow the testing to continue. Additionally, Pi Innovo had to make changes to their architecture, and some modules were eliminated while new modules were added. Vector Services was able to adapt to this and validate the new code while still providing a full set of tests on the final code within Pi Innovo’s budget and timeline. Vector Services was also able to save an estimated 1,000 hours of effort by developing a tool that automatically created test skeletons based on requirements documents.

In addition to test development, Vector Services provided project management support services which included weekly status reports, conference calls and defect tracking using Jira.

The final delivery consisted of the VectorCAST unit test scripts to allow for automated regression testing at the customer’s facility, along with test reports, bug reports, and code coverage metrics. Pi Innovo integrated this delivery into their Software Development Life Cycle and were able to rebuild all tests environments, retest any additional changes in their code and develop new tests as needed. The result was that all necessary requirements were tested, and all code was covered as per ISO 26262 ASIL D requirements.

The Advantages:

Vector Services expert engineers are uniquely qualified to help you meet your testing needs:

• With its expertise in VectorCAST and automotive testing Vector Services and its partners were able to get Pi Innovo testing faster and more effectively
• Vector Services is used to working under pressure and helped Pi Innovo meet its demanding schedule by leveraging the highlevel of test automation provided by VectorCAST
• Using Vector Services allowed Pi Innovo to focus on developing its systems and increase their value add